A 29 year old hit-and –run commercial driver Itoro Clement, has narrated how he killed Tordue Henry Salem, a reporter with the Vanguard newspaper who went missing on October 13.
The Force Public Relations Officer, Frank Mba said Clement was arrested following an investigation carried out by the Force Intelligence Bureau.
Clement who was paraded in Abuja on Friday, November 12, 2021, said he hit Salem unknowingly at about 10am, as he suddenly dashed out to the road. According to him, he didn’t stop because the Mabushi area, was known for criminal attacks.
“I thought it was an armed robber that I knocked down until the following day when I saw a smashed phone on my windscreen. The phone was not working again so I threw it away.
“The place I knocked this person down, is a criminal place everybody knows that place,” he said.
The suspect added that he came across a Police Checkpoint and reported to the officers on duty that he had hit someone.
He said the policemen he met at the check point asked him to go to the Wuse Police Station to report himself, but he refused and went straight to Good Friends Garden where he normally parked his car, before going home.
Salem’s body was found on Thursday, November 11, more than a month after he went missing.
Earlier in his address, Mba said they went to the Wuse General Hospital morgue where Salem was deposited, searched and found on him; a Keystone bank debit card, a Union Bank debit card, an ID Card issued by Vanguard Newspaper, an NUJ ID Card, and a temporary ID Card from the National Assembly Media Corp, all belonging to the deceased.
On how the police arrested the suspect, Mba said;
“when Clement hit Tordue, the victim’s phone, an iPhone fell on the car’s wheel screen. The suspect however disposed of the phone at Good Friends Garden where he usually parked his car. But the phone was picked by some boys working in the garden and some parts of the phone were sold by the boys.”
He added that the boys tried using the SIM cards for calls, which made it easy for the police to trace the phone.
According to Mba, further investigations led to the eventual arrest of Clement.
When asked who deposited Tordue’s body and why the hospital didn’t contact the police at the time, Mba said he cannot speak for the hospital.
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